The Walls Are Closing In

"Monsters and vampires, man-made creatures and ghosts, mob cruelty and murderers, these are the stock ingredients of horror...  All such terrors, however, are seen from a distance approaching us from outside ourselves...  But when the madness and collapse are presented from inside, rather than viewed from without, then the solid ground itself shifts and crumbles, and we do indeed find ourselves looking into a bottomless pit." (Butler 1967: 77).

So far in dealing with the Gothic we have encountered "the stock ingredients of horror" that Butler is discussing in his article.  The Yellow Wallpaper is the first introduction we have had to the introspective psychological aspect of the collapse of the self.  The room becomes a physical manifestation of the narrator's deteriorating mind.  We are trapped with her as she tears away the layers of this interior to free "the women" in the walls.

After reading Gilman's account of this maddening representation, I looked back on a film I watched in my British Horror Film class from last quarter that is without a doubt a modern experience of trapping an audience within a disturbing setting.

Repulsion (1965) is filmed entirely from the introspective point of view of the film’s protagonist, Carole.  The audience is trapped with Carole in her flat, which also serves as a physical representation of her rapidly decaying mind, for the majority of the movie.  Carole is consistently being objectified as an adult woman in the world outside of her apartment but within the confines of her mind, she has managed to maintain the sexual mentality of a child.  Throughout the film she is confronted with issues of sexual repression as well as the devastating results of social pressure.  Like The Yellow Wallpaper this film acknowledges the reality in which society creates the “monsters” that it is destined to look down upon.

The way Carole sees her encounters with outside world are reflected when they are redisplayed to us within her flat.  There is a moment- in one of the many extended walking scenes of the film- where a construction worker yells something nonsensical at her, which is obviously of a sexual nature.  Despite the fact that this seems like nothing but a passing comment in a long day, the man reappears in a serious way throughout the film.  There are three rape scenes that take place in the apartment while Carole's sister is away and has left her alone.  These rapes are considered to be a figment of her imagination, but what is interesting is that the man assaulting her is the same construction worker from earlier on in the film.  This instance is a perfect example of her internalization of these unwelcome sexual advances.

Carole, clearly bothered by the sexualized world of London in the "Swinging Sixties" (of which we see nothing of all I must note) retreats completely into the seclusion of the flat.  This is where the extended metaphor of her mind being constantly invaded by the advances of men, who repulse her, begins to really take effect.  She imagines the cracks around the room to crack further, as her own mental state begins also to crack.  Even as she tries to lock herself away from men by not leaving her place of residence, she cannot escape the impediment on her unconscious, as depicted by the groping hands protruding from the walls of the hallway above.

It is this social pressure that leads Carole to give in completely to her madness, driving her to murder to men who seek her as a sexual object.  In the end, she is discovered lying fragile and alone underneath her sister's bed.  At this discovery the neighbors we have never seen throughout the film come to see the spectacle, and quite literally look down upon her as they whisper their misgivings: the monster their world has created.

Gender Identity in The Yellow Wallpaper

“The problem of identity is... the problem of sexuality.  Traditionally the power of sexuality is the power of reproduction... But the root cause of horror in the genre is the protagonist’s inability to control sexuality, to thus define masculine and feminine and create legitimate identity” (Day 1985: 84-5).

Charlotte Perkins Gilman explores this particular aspect of the Gothic in her novella, The Yellow Wallpaper.  There is no question that the sexuality of the characters serves as one of the most important themes in the story and is a direct reflection of the author's intention when writing it.   The perception of female hysteria and the treatment prescribed in the 19th century was admittedly the motivation behind Gilman's creation.  

When asked why she wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, Gilman told a story about having been diagnosed with hysteria herself.  She claimed that by following the directions of the doctor, she was almost driven mad.  In her statement she expressed: "Being naturally moved to rejoicing by this narrow escape, I wrote The Yellow Wallpaper, with its embellishments and additions to carry out the ideal (I never had hallucinations or objections to my mural decorations) and sent a copy to the physician who so nearly drove me mad.  He never acknowledged it."

At the time it was medically suggested to live this sort of lifestyle.  Now what I am prone to suggest (although I don't know firsthand) that this would never be expected of a man in that time.  Little moments of this gender divide are constantly suggested in the work.  There is no question that Gilman hints at the control men have over women in her society, and by making the husband in the novel a physician she is doubly asserting the powerlessness a woman in such a position would have.

Her husband has obviously acknowledged that she is not well in that he has taken her to a house in the country to recover, however he is constantly belittling her feelings.  "John laughs at me, of course, but one expects that in marriage" (Gilman 1).  Wow.  So I guess I can't deny that I hope that if I'm ever married my husband and I can tease one another, but there is more to be said fore this quote.  One (a woman) is supposed to expect not to be taken seriously in a marriage.

So it is with this idea of the feminine that we are introduced to our protagonist and narrator.  She blindly accepts her husband's diagnosis of her illness and lets him make her believe that he wants what is best for her.  From the beginning, she expresses her discomfort in the room that he has picked out for her.  Again she bends to his will because they need the "great heavy bed" for both of them to sleep (Gilman 8).  What is interesting here is that despite the fact that John does not see her to be fit to move about and act normally, he still expects her to continue her roles as his wife.  His command over her sexuality would be astonishing in this day and age, but at the time it was completely average.

In the case of this novel the protagonist has no aspect of Day's "traditional power of sexuality" because even as she has reproduced, she cannot be a mother to her child.  Thus we return to the idea that her husband is the one who has control of her sexuality, thus giving him power over her mind.  This is why his wife cannot recover to a normal state of being.  She has only her husband's definition- and society's definition at that- of "the masculine and the feminine" and no way of grasping a sense of her "legitimate identity".

This is why I think the reader is left without an concrete idea of whether or not we have read the story of a madwoman, or if the happenings in that room were supposed to reflect an actual incident.